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Since Hollow Knight: Silksong finally dropped in 2025, Pharloom has been thoroughly prodded, poked, and parried by a horde of eager bugs—and the humans controlling them. Team Cherry, in their infinite mischief, spent seven years cramming the kingdom full of secrets that many players whiz right past while panic-dashing from a Moss Mother. But slow down, take a breath, and you’ll notice the kind of madcap genius that makes the studio so beloved. Here are eight tiny, hilarious, and often eerie details that show Pharloom is more alive than your average bug metroidvania has any right to be.
Fast travel in Silksong comes courtesy of the Bell Beast, a hulking critter that hauls Hornet through bell veins—but only after she kicks its carapace in a dominance fight. Win that scrap, and congrats: you’ve adopted a giant, bell-chomping doggo. Leave it waiting without picking a destination? It stamps its feet like a terrier denied a walk. Come back to a station and you’ll often find it curled up snoozing, just like a loyal hound waiting for its owner. Yup, that’s right—it’s basically a velvety, chitinous good boy, and nobody can convince us otherwise.
It’s easy to forget everyone in Pharloom is a bug until you stumble into Hunter’s March and see a full-blown ant colony doing exactly what ants do. Workers scuttle about, soldiers patrol, and foraging swarms hunt endlessly for food. The grimmest detail? After a fight, those same swarms will pick up the corpses of their fallen sisters and cart them off without ceremony. It’s a little morbid, sure, but honestly—ants gonna ant. Team Cherry’s knack for slipping real insect behavior into a kingdom of swords and silk never gets old.
Remember where the “vania” in “metroidvania” comes from? Team Cherry sure does. Hornet’s base moveset is a blatant love letter to Alucard from Castlevania: Symphony of the Night. Her run speed, attack cadence, backstep, even that diagonal downward pounce—it’s all practically one-to-one. The homage isn’t just for nostalgia points, either. Hornet’s agile, rapier-like default style makes darting through Pharloom feel silky smooth once you’ve got the rhythm down. Somewhere, a certain dhampir is nodding approvingly.
Struggling to get a handle on Hornet’s floaty fencing? Equip the Wanderer Crest and suddenly she moves like a certain tiny ghost we all miss. Her attack range, swing speed, and downward chop mimic the Knight from the original Hollow Knight almost perfectly—she even chokes up on her needle to wield it like a nail. It’s a brilliant bit of mechanical storytelling: whatever happened to the Knight, its fighting spirit literally lives on in Hornet’s arsenal. Let’s be real, sometimes you just need that good ol’ nail-and-slash muscle memory.
Tucked away in a forgotten corridor, Hornet can find the Choral Commandment that orchestrated her capture. Its text makes one thing crystal clear: the upper echelon of Pharloom knew exactly that Hallownest was a crumbling ruin. They knew of her origin, her power, and they still went to all that trouble to drag her up in a cage. If they’d thought the White Wyrm’s kingdom was still thriving, would they have dared? Probably not. Bad news travels fast, even between bug kingdoms.
In Hallownest, every warrior worth their shell carried a Nail. In Pharloom? Not a single one to be found. Instead, the locals prefer the far more “elegant” Pin—a weapon that favors quick thrusts, lunges, and flurries over heavy cross-cuts. It’s finesse over brute force, and it suits Hornet perfectly. One can’t help but chuckle imagining the old Nailmasters visiting Pharloom and having a collective conniption over everyone jabbing away with oversized sewing needles.
Deep in Greymoor, Hornet meets Kratt, a “helpful” flea who offers access to his caravan spa for a nominal fee. Sounds relaxing, right? Wait a beat after hopping in, and you’ll spot the little weirdo peeping through the curtains. Yes, a pervy flea is canon. Hornet can deliver swift, needle-based justice, and to his credit, Kratt doesn’t hold a grudge—he even grants free spa access afterward. It’s absurd, uncomfortable, and the exact kind of off-kilter humor that makes Team Cherry’s world so unforgettable.
On the lower west side of Shellwood, Hornet encounters a monument that asks passersby to sing for the pilgrim dead. First instinct? Ignore it as pretty set dressing. Bad move. If she lingers in a nearby grove and actually hums a tune (yes, you just hang out a while), she begins to hear the final thoughts of the buried pilgrims. The longer you stay, the more voices whisper—hints at what drives the faithful upward or what snared them in the Haunting. It’s a profoundly somber moment that rewards players for doing exactly what the game pretends to discourage: standing still.
Pharloom is stuffed to the gills with more of these little flourishes—bosses with unexpected reactions, hidden dialogues that change depending on your crest loadout, and lore nuggets tucked into the architecture. Team Cherry’s attention to the absurd, the heartfelt, and the just-plain-weird is what makes Silksong feel less like a sequel and more like a second home for bugs who know how to take a breather and look around. And with how brutally some of those bosses guard the kingdom’s passages, taking that breather isn’t just recommended—it’s a survival tactic.
Of course, all this talk of Pharloom’s hidden quirks and brutal bosses only makes the wait for Silksong feel longer. While you bide your time revisiting Hallownest or hunting down similar hand-crafted metroidvanias, it pays to be patient off-screen too—especially when it comes to scoring a good price on the games you’re eager to play. Fans who keep a close watch on the genre’s frequent storefront discounts know that a little vigilance can save a hefty pile of Geo.
If you’d rather not refresh the store page every hour, a dependable steam sale tracker like DealNest can do the waiting for you. It rounds up the best drops across Steam and beyond, so you’ll never overpay for your next bug-filled adventure—and when Silksong finally lands, you’ll be ready to strike the moment the price is right.
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